Santina Rao was watching her three-year-old daughter play in the Walmart toy section roughly 20 minutes before the mother of two was thrown to the ground and handcuffed by a hulking Halifax Regional Police officer.

The 23-year-old woman’s toddler son was asleep in his stroller at the Mumford Road department store in Halifax on Wednesday afternoon. She was on the phone with her mom.

Then she recalls being approached by two HRP officers and three Walmart employees following right behind.

“One of the officers said they had reason to believe I was concealing items on me and I told them I had nothing to hide,” Rao said.

She was never charged with theft, but the situation quickly got out of control. One of the officers called for backup and four more police officers arrived.

By the end of her four-hour ordeal with police, she had been arrested and left with a black eye and swollen wrist. Rao said she sat in a holding cell for an hour and a half, having no idea where her kids were.

By the end of it, she was charged with resisting arrest, disturbing the peace and assaulting a police officer.

'I was racially profiled, 100 per cent'

Rao, who has no criminal record and said she’s had no previous brushes with the law, believes she was racially profiled by Walmart employees and police officers who unnecessarily assaulted her. She is speaking out and has posted details of the experience on her Facebook page that includes pictures of her bruised face and swollen wrist. She wants those police officers and store employees held accountable.

“I was racially profiled, 100 per cent,” said Rao. “I believe that my children and I in no way deserved to go through this. I think a lot of people like to think that our police don’t engage in any kind of brutality or racism. Well, I’m proof that it does exist and people need to be aware of it.”

Rao said she had already paid for about $90 worth of items, including four DVDs. She paid for the goods in the electronic section that were bagged with a receipt. But because the cashier didn’t have a scale to weigh produce Rao also wanted to buy, she made her way to the front of the store where she could pay for it.

She said she was heading there when her children wanted to stop and play in the toy section. Shortly after the police arrived she said she was willing to let the officers inspect her bags and the stroller but they declined. Rao said she felt unjustly targeted by the officers and became angry and began yelling at them.

“One of the officers said because I was hysterical and making a scene, he could arrest me for disturbing the peace. The other officers were saying I was embarrassing myself but I wanted people to see that I was being harassed.

“My two children are there and I’m being hounded by all these officers like I’m committing some serious crime that I didn’t do in the first place.

“When I showed the produce to the police one of them said it doesn’t matter, people have tried to steal less.”

From there, things escalated quickly, she said. That’s when the arresting officer made his move.

“He suddenly grabbed my left forearm and pulled me towards him. He did not read me my rights or explain to me why I was being arrested. I went to push him away and scratched him in the face. Three cops then jumped on top of me.”

In the process, she said the arresting officer punched her in the face.

“He put his knee on my neck and head. I was cuffed and I never felt that kind of pain before, having a nearly 300-pound man put that kind of force on my body and twist my arm. He pushed my arm so far up my back it was sitting between my shoulder blades.”

Looking into legal action

Rao, who lost a shoe in the scuffle, said she recalls her daughter screaming for her before the mother was escorted outside in her sock feet by three officers and then placed in a police car. She inquired about her children and was told only that they were safe and being looked after.

From there she said she was taken to the HRP office on Gottingen Street where she was fingerprinted and photographed. After being held in a holding cell for an hour and a half she was released. She said officers told her that she would be held overnight because she was too hysterical and presented a risk to the public and her children.

Instead, while detained she spoke to a lawyer at Nova Scotia Legal Aid who instead arranged her release early Wednesday evening. She walked from the police station to her home in Mulgrave Park about a half-hour away.

When she arrived at her home she discovered her children were at her dad’s home. When she spoke to The Chronicle Herald she was in the process of going to the hospital to determine the extent of her injuries.

“I have a swollen wrist the size of my fist, a black eye and ligature marks from the handcuffs. It’s unbelievable.”

She said she’s in the process of contacting a lawyer to pursue legal action against HRP.

Halifax Regional Police issued a news release saying that officers responded to a “theft in progress” at the Mumford Road Walmart on Wednesday afternoon. The statement said police wouldn’t provide specifics but did disclose that officers “approached a woman who was believed to have concealed items. She became verbally abusive and was behaving aggressively. The officers then attempted to place the woman under arrest for causing a disturbance.”

The statement said the woman resisted arrest and assaulted one of the officers. The officer was taken to hospital for treatment and later released.

Regarding Rao’s accusations against the officers, the statement said the police force "takes any allegation of this nature very seriously and we are currently looking into the matter closely.”

Halifax black activist El Jones said the incident demonstrates a continued pattern of consumer and police racial profiling in the city.

"The police are sent in and engage violently with this woman and they treat her as a violent criminal even though she’s falsely accused of shoplifting produce and you see this disproportionate response," said Jones. "This woman was innocent and she was never charged with theft. But you see the store and police working together to profile black people.”

Jones is organizing a rally outside the Walmart outlet on Friday at 5 p.m. Rao won’t be there because she is banned from the property. That has served to further Jones’s resolve.

"When these things happen in our community we’re going to take them to the door where these injustices are happening. We as a community are not standing for this."

The Herald contacted both the Walmart Mumford location and its national head office in Toronto but neither offered comment.

The Herald also inquired with the Justice Department about whether Minister Mark Furey would look into the incident. But a department spokeswoman responded by suggesting that Rao file a formal complaint with the Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner.